A man has slammed Essex County Council after claiming his wife suffered an epileptic fit when she fell into a cracked pavement that had not been repaired.

Colin Morris, of Clover Field in Harlow, says the path on Commonside Road, the adjacent road, is not safe for residents to walk on after the incident is alleged to have happened last month.

Mr Morris and his wife, who did not wish to be named, parked up their car next to the cracked path, but because it was late at night could not see the damage until it was too late.

"I could not park outside my home and it was dark and I forgot about the pavement," said the 53-year-old.

"My wife got out of the car, she fell over and gashed her leg. She put her foot right in it - I helped her inside and she had an epileptic fit."

RAC Index

The latest RAC Index saw the number of reported potholes has risen by 44 per cent across England, Scotland and Wales between 2015 and 2017, with more than half a million being reported across the country.

However, Essex bucks the trend compared to the national scene. The data showed that there were 15,085 potholes reported in Essex in 2015.

Compare that to 2017 and there were only 8,237 road defects reported - a 45 per cent decrease over two years.

Councillor Kevin Bentley, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Infrastructure at Essex County Council, said: "This is fantastic news for Essex and testament to the hard work of our highways crews over the past few years. The report shows that Essex has bucked the national trend with a 45 per cent decrease over the last two years in the number of potholes reported. The numbers speak for themselves and I’m proud of the progress we've made.

"We are not complacent however, we know there is more work to be done. This year we welcomed an additional £11million funding from the Government and are using this to trial new approaches to fix even more potholes across the network. We've already seen an extra 3,000 potholes fixed since the end of October and 250 miles of Essex roads resurfaced this year as a result.

"While budget constraints on road maintenance will remain very tight, the work carried out this year means we are in a favourable position heading into 2019 and I feel confident that he network will be able to cope should we be faced with more extreme weather like we experienced earlier this year.

"I'd like to encourage local people to help us improve our roads even further, by continuing to report potholes in their area online via our website."

The pavement has sunk (Image: Martine Xerri)

Cracked pavements and potholes fall under the responsibility of Essex Highways, a partnership between Ringway Jacobs and Essex County Council.

The highways team carry out inspections of the roads and prioritise the repairs they make.

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Mr Morris claims the issue was raised with Essex Highways in June 2018, and again after the recent incident, but the engineers did not timetable a response time to repair it, because it was not considered serious enough.

He added: "I have asked the council for six months – they have said the subcontractors have looked at it and deemed it low priority.

"It seems that until someone actually seriously hurts themselves they will not repair it."

Local residents are upset that the pavement has not been repaired when they raised the issue (Image: Martine Xerri)

How Essex Highways prioritise potholes

For local roads, there are four categorisations for potholes or cracked pavements.

Priority One (P1) - will be repaired in two hours

P2 - will be repaired in five working days

P3 - Defect to be considered for repair as part of the planned maintenance programme

P4 - Repair will be undertaken with a non-specified timetable

A spokesperson for Essex County Council said: "We are very sorry to hear about this woman's accident and hope she makes a full recovery.

"There are a few cracks in the pavement surface in the area, but we haven't found any urgent issues to date.

"We re-inspect all sites where people report an accident. Our inspector will check the situation and if necessary make any repairs.

"We would encourage residents to report any new problems or issues that get any worse online at essex.gov.uk/highways."